


The Land of Flowers

by magicandlight



Series: The States [5]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, F/F, Florida Centric, Internalized Homophobia, Kisses Are Not A Magical Cure-All, Panic Attacks, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Religion x Sexuality Conflicts, REWRITTEN 9/15/18, The Confederacy is a jerk, remember! Florida is hispanic!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-26 05:15:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12052080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandlight/pseuds/magicandlight
Summary: Her younger years are a blur.She doesn't remember much between her creation and being found on the doorstep of the church.





	The Land of Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> this was rewritten September 2018

**1640**  
Her first clear memory is of the sand beneath her feet, the ships sailing in.

 **1670**  
Her younger years are a blur.

She doesn't remember much between her creation and being found on the doorstep of the church, feet torn to shreds by thorns and the scar spilling down her shoulder in frost-like fractals.

What she does remember, she remembers vaguely: running through forests barefoot, flowers woven into her dark hair, gentle hands holding her, the soft pad of an animal walking beside her.

Mostly, she remembers being alone.

She was named by a nun.  _María Esmeralda Amalia de Gracía Iglesias._ (Foundling. Orphan.  _De Gracía Iglesias,_ grace of the church.)

The nuns don't like her much- they say she's unnatural, that she never gets sick and she's too strong, that her eyes are too knowing.

She is good, though. She remembers her prayers and they say she has a voice like an angel and she never speaks out of turn and she's obedient.

 **1700**  
Sometimes the religion seems to burrow under her skin. She feels out of place, and bizarrely, like she's disappearing, sometimes. 

She keeps looking down and expecting to see holes through her stomach where pieces of her have vanished into thin air. 

Spanish doesn't sit well those days, choking the words from her throat. 

Sometimes she is acutely aware that she is not a human, that she isn't a lamb of god because what lamb can toss around a black bear and live decades and not age at all. 

She was born from the land, born in a field of flowers, motherless, a fully-formed child with eyes the color of gemstones. If the nuns knew about that part, they'd think she was some sort of demon. Something that should have been drowned. Even saints age and die, and she does neither. Her scraped knees scab over in seconds, gone before the day is over. 

Sometimes, all of it is too much. She gets the urge to  _go go go_ , to wander aimlessly.

She always comes back in the end.

 **1730**  
She thinks she might have known the man before. He's familiar and yet not at the same time. 

He looks at her with sympathy. "Oh, Florida, what have they done to you?"

He speaks in a language she doesn't remember learning. She looks down at her bare feet to avoid meeting his sad eyes, studying the ragged hem of her dress where it caught in thorns the other week instead. She doesn't know how long she's been gone, but it hasn't been long enough yet. 

She pushes at her memory. It offers up a faded memory of a purple flower, spiky, one that cut her hand when she picked it, and dark hands cleaning off the cuts. 

He sighs. "You used to be wild. They have made you like them."

 **1769**  
They never tell her it's wrong because they don't think that it would ever be an issue.

And then it is an issue.

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ 

She kisses a girl that was her best friend. Florida's hands shake and her hands cup the girl's face and her heart is a fragile, trembling dove in this girl's hands.

Her mouth is still warm from the kiss when the nun slaps her.

 **1811**  
Alfred knew exactly who she was the second he met her.

There was no way he couldn't, not with her emerald eyes and tanned skin and dark curls.

Not when she looked so much like Spain.

He had been expecting a toddler, but here was a seven-year-old girl.

There was a dainty rosary around her neck that told him exactly where she had come from. She was about seven, her hair pulled back with a bonnet. Her dress brushed her shins above her ankles, and seemed a little tight around her chest and arms.

Alfred knelt down. "What's your name, kid?"

"María." Her name is colored with a Spanish accent, the accented _i_ audible.

Sometimes, it's better not to rush with the states. Alfred smiles at her. "But that's not your only name."

Fear flickers through green eyes.

"You are Spanish Florida, the Territory of New Spain,  _La Florida_." He locked eyes with the girl. "I'm America. And you can come home with me, if you like, to meet your brothers and sisters."

"Home?" The shock of that one word seemed to make her revert to Spanish. " _¿Casa? ¿Dónde?_ "

"Virginia. North. Um.  _Norte_. Would you like to come with me?"

Florida looked at him with those green green eyes. " _Sí, por favor."_

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ 

It took a lot of lies to get the Church to let him take Florida.

An hour and a half later, he's helping the girl stuff clothes into a bag.

It's then that he realizes how much he will need for her. The shoes on her feet are coming apart, and the other pair she has seems to be much too small. If her dress is anything to go by, the rest of her clothes are too small for her, too. He says nothing as Florida lovingly tucks a well-loved doll into her satchel.

Florida looks longingly at the music box on the nightstand, then back at her satchel.

"Do you think it would break?  _¿En el camino a Virginia?_ " She asks. The English is halting, rough, accented. He has a feeling that she understands it better than she speaks it.

America thinks. "We could wrap it in my jacket and put it in my saddlebag." He tells her. "It wouldn't break, then." He can't say no to those big green eyes.

Florida smiles, eyes lighting up.

 **1811**  
Florida hides behind his legs when Virginia comes out of the house.

Ginny raised her eyebrows, mouth quirking into a smile. "Is that her? Florida?"

Alfred nodded. He looked back towards the door in time to see Evangeline poke her head out. Physically thirteen, and more like a teenager every day, he thought. He loved her, but she was a pain, especially considering how many fights she got into with physically-fifteen-year-old Virginia.

Eight-year-old Abigail peeked out from behind Evangeline.

Alfred pushed Florida out from behind him. "Ginny, meet María Esmeralda Amalia de Gracía Iglesias." (He'd laughed when she'd first said her full name.)

"That is an incredibly long name," Ginny comments as she bends down to Florida's height. "My name's Elizabeth Victoria Jones, but most people call me Ginny."  _Mother of States indeed._

"Why?" Florida asked.

"Because I'm Virginia."

"Oh. I'm Florida."

Ginny turned, and motioned for Abby to come over. She did, very hesitantly.

"Abigail. Abby. Whichever."

"María. Florida. You?"

"The District of Columbia." Sera sighed at Florida's confused look. "Washington DC. The capital?"

"Oh."

 **1812**  
The day America tells her she can have a different name, she doesn't always have to have the same one, she's ecstatic.

It only takes her two days to decide she doesn't want Spain's last name, she wants America's. That she doesn't want to be named  _María._

And Alfred calls her Flora, like the flowers, like the field where she formed, and she is so  _happy_.

Flora Esmeralda-Amalia  _Jones._ Like Abby and Evangeline. Like Alfred.

 **June 12, 1812**  
"Come on, Flora!" Abby pulls at her hand. "We're gonna be late! Then you won't get to meet everyone."

Flora lets Abby drag her through the halls of the White House, towards the room where the  _United States of America_  meeting was scheduled.

It would be the first time Flora met some of the states, like the New Englanders and everyone who wasn't on the immediate East Coast.

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁

"Flora!" David calls, gesturing for her to come over, where Daniel and unfamiliar red-haired state stand.

He puts his arm around the girl. "This is my sister, Georgia. She's technically your neighbor, geography-wise."

The red-haired girl -Georgia- smiles, and Florida's heart stutters.

"Scarlett." She says. "And you're Flora, right?"

 **November 1812**  
The first time Flora realizes that some of her fellow states (siblings? She isn't sure how this is supposed to work) are like her, she locks herself in her room and has a panic attack, curled up in a ball in her bathtub.

None of them are subtle about it either. What goes on in the state houses stays in the state houses, apparently, so there's no reason to hide the affection in Cam's voice when he runs his fingers through Monty's hair, or Nicky's playful and teasing flirtations.

She sits on the staircase landing later that week, long after she should have gone to bed, watching Tim and Kendall waltz (well, trying to anyway. They've stepped on each other's feet so many times...)

It doesn't look  _wrong_. They look natural. They don't look like they're sinning.

Flora frowns, hand tangling in the chain of her rosary. Well, they always said that sins never looked  _bad_. They were supposed to be beautiful. How could they tempt you otherwise?

Flora watches the states dance, and somehow she cannot bring herself to think of them as unforgivable.

Her eyebrows furrow. Hate the sin, love the sinner, right?

She nods to herself and goes back upstairs.

 **August 26, 1814**  
Abby was her  _friend._ When Will and Scott had brought her in on the twenty-fourth, it hadn't been pretty.

"Ginny?" The older girl looked up from her spot kneeling beside Abigail. "Will Abby be okay?"

Ginny looked up. "I don't know, Flora." She looked down at the bandaged girl beside her. "I don't know."

 **August 27, 1814**  
She has a panic attack that day, and it seems unfair that she should feel so panicky and anxious, when she has nothing to be scared of. She isn't fighting. She isn't hurt. Flora doesn't do anything and yet she's the only one who can't keep it together. 

 **November 11, 1814**  
It's late by the time Alfred gets home from the battle in Pensacola. It's just a moment before Ginny falls in to step beside him. "She's in her room. Asleep. Just changed the bandages an hour ago."

Alfred isn't even surprised when he finds himself in Florida's doorway three minutes later.

The wound Pensacola left on her was small, but he'd already had too many children injured in this war.

He turns to leave. The floorboard creaks under his mud-stained boots.

"Daddy?" Flora sounds like she's still mostly asleep, but Alfred stops and turns back around.

He won't ignore his children.

He crouches down beside Flora, and tries to disassociate hergreen eyes with Antonio's. (He tried to do the same with Sam, so he wouldn't look at her and see Arthur. Sometimes it worked.)

"Hey, kiddo. How are you?"

Flora smiles in a way that reminds him of Evangeline, somehow. "Better now."

"Good. Love you, kid."

"Love you too, Daddy."

 **May 3, 1816**  
"What is  _that_?" Flora asks, already trying to pet whatever it is. 

Michael glances up from his paper. "Careful. His teeth are sharp."

Flora gentles her touch. "But  _what_  is he?"

"He's a wolverine. His name's Mittens."

He isn't soft and cuddly, but Flora wasn't expecting him to be. 

 **February 22, 1819**  
Spain signs the treaty in front of him and never understands why his heart seemed to sink in his chest. (At least, never, until he meets Florida-all grown up- nearly two hundred years later.)

"So Florida is mine in two years to the day?" America asks.

"Yes."

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁

Flora rolls the words around on her tongue.  _The Adams-Onís Treaty_.

She stretches on her tippy toes to try and see the paper that says she is officially America's. Beside her, Caleb is trying to do the same thing.

Neither are tall enough to see it.

Scott sighs as he picks them both up and sits them on the table.

This is the nation copy, the one with personification signatures on it. Flora traces her fingers over the writing.

_Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams._  
_President of the United States, James Monroe._  
_Personification of the United States of America, Alfred F. Jones._

_Spanish foreign minister, Luis de Onís y González-Vara._  
_King of Spain, Ferdinand VII._  
_Personification of the Kingdom of Spain, Antonio Fernández Carriedo._

She'd rather be a Jones than a Carriedo any day. Being a kingdom was probably really stuffy and boring, anyway.

Flora looks at Caleb, laughing as Scott tells him jokes.

Yeah. Much better to be a Jones.

 **April 13, 1820**  
The days before Prussia's arrival were filled with chaos. States arriving, the entire house being cleaned, food being prepared.

Flora wasn't quite sure who Prussia was or why all the states seemed to harbor fondness towards him. Ginny had said something about being good to them at Valley Forge, and how none of them would forget that.

Alfred takes her down to the docks to wait for the ship with Cass, one of the newer states. Alfred even lets her piggyback ride when she got tired of standing.

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁

While Cass took off, flying towards an albino who had put a trunk down in preparation for the twelve-year-old barreling into him, Flora stays back and grips Alfred's hand tighter.

"Go on. He's a friend." America whispers. Flora nods.

Prussia finally convinces Cass to stop trying to smother him and picks his trunk up, talking to Cass in quick German that made Flora's Spanish-wired brain hurt.

When Prussia saw her, he falters.

"Alfred. What's with mini Antonio?"

"Gilbert, meet Flora, Florida Territory."

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁

Gilbert sits down beside Flora on the porch steps.

"You know, I know your dad."

Well, of course, he knew Alfred-

"Spain, that is. We're friends. He isn't all that bad."

_Conquistadors running the Indians out, blood welling up from cuts she didn't remember getting, entire tribes dying of European sickness, that hollow feeling in her as the natives died out-_

"He isn't all conquistador all the time," Prussia says. "He even has this little bratty nation that he absolutely adores living with him. He isn't all scary. He likes kids, genuinely, in a non-creepy way-"

"I believe you," Flora whispers. Gilbert stops talking.

"You look like him. A lot like him. Same curly hair, same eyes, same smile..."

"Dad told me."

Prussia smiles.

 **May 17, 1830**  
There is a beautiful girl one day when she visits Sera at the White House and Flora's chest aches when she smiles.

Sera greets her by name and when Flora looks at her, she waves her hand dismissively. "She's the cook's daughter."

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁

Flora goes home and fills the bathtub with water as hot as she can get it.

She hisses when she climbs in, and allows herself a single minute to adjust to the heat before she scrubs her skin raw, trying to somehow remove the sin from her skin.

She cries. She grips her rosary so tight it hurts and whispers  _father forgive me for i have sinned_ until the words lose all meaning.

 **March 3, 1845**  
She was still buzzing with excitement, even though it had two hours since she was presented with her star and signed her statehood acceptance letters.

Maybe it was the champagne one of the elder states had given her a glass off.

Maybe was the fact that she was a state now.

 **May 17, 1849**  
Flora is sitting with Ev in her land, feet dangling off a dock into the ocean.

"It's okay, you know," Evangeline says. "Alfred won't care about that."

Flora does not look at her. Her heart beats a rapid rhythm like a captured bird, a panicked litany of  _she knows she knows she knows_. "I don't know what you're talking about."

She can feel Evangeline staring at her. "Flora. It's okay to be-"

Flora shoots to her feet. " _I am not_ , Evangeline." She knows her voice is biting and cold and Evangeline flinches.

They'd fought once, already, about things like this. Flora had found out about Evangeline and the pretty dark-skinned Creole girl and Flora had yelled at her about how Evangeline was Catholic, too, and then she'd refused to talk to Evangeline for three months.

Regret hollows her stomach but Flora doesn't apologize. 

 **January 10, 1861**  
Flora tries to convey how sorry she was as she handed America the Notification. He had given her everything, raised her.

Her eyes flicker to Scarlett as she hands Alfred the paper. Scarlett, who hadn't been the same since Daniel left, who had become increasingly silent as the days passed.

 **February 15, 1861**  
There was anger boiling inside of her as the newly-personified Confederacy looked Georgia up and down. Like she was a cow on an auction block.

Flora barely noted Daniel's jaw clenching, or the way Josh's smile was suddenly strained, or how even Ev's fist clenched.

She only saw that Scarlett's smile seemed to shrink the longer Jackson continued to look at her appraisingly, that her shoulders curved inward, and she slouched almost imperceptibly.

 **Summer 1861**  
Scarlett looks like an avenging angel when she holds a cavalry sword. Scarlett makes Flora think about beautiful, dangerous things: belladonna, lily-of-the-valley, the truth. Scarlett is golden, is the ocean at sunset. Scarlett's hair reminds Flora of a fox's pelt, and her eyes are the color of the clearest waters in the Gulf. The bones in her wrist are delicate and bird-like but her hands are calloused from years of guns and swords. She bites her lip when she concentrates. She is bright and fierce and blindingly vibrant, like the color she's named after. She has a light in her like an angel's hope and Flora  _can't_ , she can't think about the way Scarlett moves like a dancer or the way she looks when she fences with Ginny.

Jackson puts a hand on Scarlett's shoulders and Scarlett shrinks and Flora hates him with a ferocity that should scare her, but somehow doesn't.

 **Fall 1861**  
She meets a northern state in battle for the first time that fall. 

Del is like some sort of heavenly force of retribution. Where she shoots, men fall like dominos. 

And then she hesitates. 

Flora glances over toward where Del is staring, still shell-shocked. 

David weaves through the line, red hair like a beacon. 

He's an easy target. 

Del doesn't shoot. 

 **August 9, 1862**  
They are not friends. The main reason they talk at all is that Scarlett sits against the orange tree because it can hide her from the house when she needs to disappear and Flora likes to pick the oranges.

They are not friends. But if Flora sometimes climbs up and picks too many oranges, if she sits beside Scarlett and silently offers her one, there is no one to see but them, so it doesn't count.

 **January 1863**  
There is a bruise blossoming across Scarlett's face.

It isn't delicate or pastel, it's an awful horrible thing that hides her freckles under an ugly purplish color.

Flora reaches out to touch it, then thinks better of it. "I'll kill him."

Scarlett watches her with disinterested eyes. "Don't make promises you can't keep."

 **February 17, 1863**  
There is a strategy meeting and she smiles at Scarlett even though she shouldn't.

 **May 1863**  
Evangeline runs and David sits across from Jackson with a bored expression and says  _I knew she was running, I helped her leave_.

Jackson lunges for him, but Scarlett is between them then, knife in her hand and body poised like a rattlesnake before it strikes. Her face is granite when she speaks. "Touch my brother and I'll kill you."

Flora remembers the way Scarlett had looked at her and said  _don't make promises you can't keep._ She'd managed to forget that Scarlett can take care of herself in the wake of that bruise. She'd thought of her like one of those fox cubs and forgot that those foxes grow up into fiery-coated creatures with sharp teeth, that Scarlett hadn't been a child since the first time she raised a gun in the name of independence.

Flora knows that is a promise Scarlett would kill herself to keep.

The Carolinas exchange a look, one that promises retribution if Jackson takes another step closer to Scarlett.

Jackson steps back.

 **July 19, 1863**  
Flora wants to memorize the constellations of Scarlett's freckles. She wants to run her fingers over every scar, every place where Scarlett broke or fractured or bled and healed stronger. She wants to tangle her hands in her red hair and kiss her breathless. She wants and wants and wants and she needs to find a way to make it _stop_.

 **November 1863**  
She has a panic attack once during the war. Jackson sits beside her and reminds her to breathe and brushes her curls out of her face like Alfred used to do and she wants to scream  _don't touch me_  because those are the same fists that beat Evangeline and bruised Scarlett and hurt Drew.

Flora doesn't have the breath to spare to scream. Jackson leaves when she isn't hyperventilating anymore.

 **February 20, 1864**  
There is a battle in Olustee and Flora briefly wonders why some battles tear her skin and some make her head feel like she chugged three bottles of rum, but then she's in too much pain to care about philosophy.   
  
(She doesn't think about much except the pain.)

 **June 13, 1864**  
They sit together under the orange tree again. Scarlett is cleaning her cavalry sword with a gentleness that suggests she's had it for a long time.

Flora peels an orange, halving it and then halving it again.

She sucks on an orange slice and does not watch Scarlett's hands.

Flora offers Scarlett a piece, and Scarlett bites into it, pulling it from between Flora's fingers, orange slice making a mockery of a smile.

Flora swallows and does not think about Scarlett's mouth against her fingers.

 **November 15, 1864**  
Flora never wanted to hear Scarlett scream again.

The Carolinas were on either side of her, trying to calm her.

A thick, harsh wound was creeping up from her heart towards her collarbone. It looks like it was burning, down the center.  _Scorched earth_.

Her hand went to her rosary as a reflex.

Scarlett whimpers, eyes closing. It's a small, broken sound.

Flora backs out of the room slowly. She flinches when Scarlett's screams start up again.

 **November 30, 1864**  
Flora doesn't know how Scarlett can hold her gun, how she can stand the impact to her shoulder every time she fires.

Flora doesn't know how Scarlett even  _moves_ \- she saw the scorch marks spreading over her collar bones this morning, and the deep gouges trailing down to her stomach.

The victory is an adrenaline rush like no other, like experiencing a dozen near-misses and close-calls all at once, tempered with the realization that you've survived.

Flora lets her legs fold under her body when she realizes it's over, knees hitting the ground painfully. 

She thinks about angels as she watches Scarlett running across the field to fling herself into Daniel's arms. 

 **April 1865**  
Ginny leaves and the world goes to hell.

Flora leaves one day, and she allows herself this one indulgence: she hands Scarlett an orange blossom and smiles at her.

 **May 1865**  
May is a blur of tequila and tears and the vivid image of eleven state-stars on a table, little more than war prizes.

 **Summer 1868**  
They give Flora her star back, and she refuses to cry until she's back home. She clings to the metal for a long time, tracing out  _Florida_  over and over.

They give Scarlett her star back, too. (Eight months later they expel her from the union again and take her star again.)

 **December 25, 1870**  
Scarlett has gotten her star back, but these past two decades have worn on her, and it's obvious.

But Flora feels like she's eleven and stunned by Scarlett all over again when Scarlett looks over and smiles.

That night, she grips her rosary in her hand so hard and so long her fingers feel numb.

 **March 3, 1880**  
The first time she kisses Scarlett, it's because she had turned back towards her too fast and overbalanced and somehow when they hit the ground, Scarlett's mouth was on Flora's and they both have wide eyes.

They scramble apart, and Flora runs. 

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁

"I'm very sorry about the incident yesterday." Flora mutters. Scarlett raises her eyebrows.

"I don't think you should be all that sorry." Scarlett says finally.

"......what?"

Scarlett sighs, and kisses her. Flora stills, and then her brain shuts off and she forgets about the rosary around her neck, she forgets all the reasons she shouldn't and kisses Scarlett back.

 **May 29, 1880**  
Sometimes Scarlett kisses Flora and Flora feels like she's swallowing stars, like somewhere in her chest there is a star going supernova.

In her life, Flora has kissed exactly one boy and one girl before Scarlett. It hadn't felt like this then.

It is simultaneously the best and the worst. Flora thinks it would take a century of  _forgive me father_ s to repent for this. She isn't quite sure she wants to repent. Sometimes, she wonders how something so perfect and blinding could be wrong.

 **November 12, 1880**  
It takes eight months for Flora to kiss Scarlett first.

Scarlett is patient, she understands that kisses are not a magical cure for centuries of self-hatred and religious prejudice. She knows that she is the one who initiates the kisses and that that is how it must be for right now.

If anything, Flora loves her more for it.

 **November 23, 1883**  
"You deserve better." Flora whispers.

Scarlett doesn't hesitate. "I don't care if I supposedly deserve better. I _want_  you."

Flora doesn't know how to explain that she will not feel that way when Flora falls apart again. 

She isn't good at being whole. She is a patchwork quilt of anxiety and faith and depression and hope, a paradox in pieces. Flora shatters infinitely and then tries to sew herself back together with stitches of good things, sunshine and happiness and hope.

Scarlett is so effortlessly kind and brave and understanding. She deserves better. 

 **May 11, 1887.**  
Flora likes Scarlett best when the blinds are closed and the curtains are drawn and the doors are locked: when Flora forgets how to be afraid for a little while and Scarlett doesn't worry about who might see.

They play records and Scarlett teaches Flora how to dance even though the records rarely go with the dances. Scarlett has a peach tree close enough to her house to lean out of the window and pick a peach. Sometimes if it's warm enough, Scarlett will pull out an old blanket and spread it out under it, and they'll eat outside or just lay there and talk. They sleep next to each other, sometimes curled against each other like quotation marks, sometimes with their hands as the only place that touches.

 **July 17, 1890**  
Scarlett's hand is tangled with hers, Flora's thumb pressed to the pulse beating in her wrist.

"I love you," Scarlett says, and Flora can feel the steady thrum of her pulse, each beat saying  _truth truth truth_  and Flora thinks she loves her too.

Flora doesn't say it back, but she squeezes her hand tighter, and Scarlett understands what she means.

 **October 1891**  
Scarlett's fingertips trace over Flora's collarbone to her shoulder to her bicep, tracing the scars spilling down her shoulder. Her mouth follows the path her fingers pave, and Flora shudders, tipping her head back. Scarlett presses hot, open-mouthed kisses over her throat, nips at her pulse point. 

Scarlett doesn't leave hickeys. Neither of them ever do. 

 **April 7, 1893**  
Flora's self-worth is an unsteady tightrope. Sometimes her mind turns into a treacherous place intent on destroying everything that grows there. Her mood shifts unpredictably sometimes, like the weather at home.

Scarlett isn't always around, but when she is, she doesn't let Flora beat herself up. Scarlett seems to somehow lucked out on the immortal-wisdom draw, and whenever Flora says something self-depreciating, she's there with a  _hey, I've got more scars than you and you say I'm pretty. Look at this one, it looks awful. Doesn't make me ugly. So yours don't make you ugly._ or  _of course you aren't useless. You feed all those strays and you saved Tim's life, like, three times_.

Flora wraps herself in blankets and sleeps for days. She doesn't have the energy to get up. 

Scarlett comes over the third day, uses the key Flora gave her and she keeps on a chain around her neck. 

Scarlett drags her out of bed and into the bathtub fully-clothed, but at least the water's warm. 

Scarlett runs her fingers through Flora's hair and when Flora opens her mouth to say _you deserve better_ , Scarlett kisses her before she can finish saying  _deserve_. 

 **August 30, 1893**  
It is so easy for Scarlett to say that she loves her, to kiss her.

Meanwhile, Flora can't even think about saying them without panicking. After their first time together, Flora had cried in the bathtub instead of cuddling with Scarlett.

Part of it lies in their differences: Scarlett isn't afraid the way Flora is. Flora fears divine retribution. Scarlett fears familial rejection and the cruelty of humans.

They aren't the same things.

 **June 12, 1894**  
Flora isn't stupid. She knows what she feels for Scarlett, but it's one thing to think it and a completely different, way more terrifying thing to say it out loud.

Years later, all she'll remember is how hot it was, how the heat seemed to make the air heavier and harder to breathe. How they both stripped down to their underwear and went out onto the beach to swim. The way the words felt in her mouth as she said them.

They lie on the sheets, too overheated to bother climbing under them after their swim. Scarlett brushes their fingers together. The glow of the candlelight turns Scarlett's frizzing curls into a halo and Flora loves her.

Flora forgets about the sweat all over her body, the way she still smells like salt water, the way her clothes are starting to stick to her skin with sweat and how gross that feels, too captivated by this ethereal girl beside her. The words spill out of her mouth. "I love you."

Scarlett looks at her and smiles, softer and sweeter than any peach. "I love you, too."

 **May 12, 1915**  
"Flora?"

Flora picks another orange and settles it into the basket before she looks over.

Scarlett swallows, hands fisting into the delicate material of her skirt. "I think I'm going to tell my brothers."

Flora bites her lip, and then nods. "Alright."

Scarlett smiles and plucks another orange from the tree. 

Flora looks away, ignoring the what-ifs plaguing her brain. 

 **May 13, 1915**  
"Can I tell them about us?" Scarlett asks quietly that night, her head on Flora's shoulder, their legs tangled together.

Flora swallows. "Yeah." 

 **July 7, 1915**  
Scarlett comes out to her brothers, and now they aren't a secret anymore. 

Flora still has to tell Alfred.

❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ ❁ 

"I'm gay." Flora says, and for a moment, she thinks Alfred didn't hear her.

Then he looks at her with soft eyes. "Thank you for telling me. You're dating Scarlett now, then?"

Flora nods hesitantly.

"Good. You make a cute couple."

 **December 24, 1919**  
"Hey, you okay?"

Flora glances down at Scarlett, who had decided that Flora was warmer than her and then attempted to burrow into Flora's side. 

It feels almost strange to be so openly cuddling after hiding it for so long. 

She's happy this way, though. 

Flora smiles at her girlfriend. "Yeah, I'm good." And then, because she can: "I love you."

Scarlett beams. "I love you, too."

**Author's Note:**

> REWRITTEN: Now with 50% more gay!
> 
> -The scar on Flora's shoulder is a Lichtenberg scar, or a scar made by lightning. It's a personification scar caused by all the lightning Florida gets (they get the most lightning in the US), so Flora's never actually been struck.
> 
> -it isn't clear at all, but the man in the first part is meant to be Seminole. The purple flower that's mentioned is Cirsium horridulum, which they used to make blowgun darts.


End file.
